Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle

Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (2018) films Kipling not as a children's tale but as a hard story about belonging. A boy raised by wolves is neither wolf nor human; neither side counts him as their own, and the film puts that exclusion at its centre. Andy Serkis directed and said he built it deliberately closer to adults: it was always meant to be PG-13, the themes were darker, and the animal violence was not gratuitous but was definitely there. The project had a long history. It began in 2012, and Steve Kloves, Ron Howard and Alejandro González Iñárritu were attached before Serkis took over in March 2014; Iñárritu left over scheduling. Warner Bros. first set it for October 2016, then 2017, then 2018. The reason was plain: distance from Disney's Jungle Book, released in April 2016. In July 2018 Netflix bought worldwide distribution rights, sparing the studio both the comparison and the marketing spend. The animals were made with performance capture, with the actors' expressions carried onto animal faces. Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Benedict Cumberbatch and Serkis himself are in the cast. It runs 105 minutes. Good for: Kipling adaptations, performance capture, and dark fable. Less good for: the common critical verdict lands; it is too dark for children and too tame for adults. The human expressions on animal faces strike some viewers as strange. The tone keeps shifting.